


Where We Used To Bleed, And Where Our Blood Needs To Be

by glamtrashbandito (custodian)



Series: A Complete Reversion [2]
Category: Trench - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trench (Album), Cycles Are A Thing, DEMA (Twenty One Pilots), Memory Loss, Mental Coercion, Religious Guilt, Suicidal Thoughts, The Smear, apply ship goggles to taste, vialism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21959221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/custodian/pseuds/glamtrashbandito
Summary: The Smear exists to Correct.  To unwrite the broken parts, to instill obedience and compliance over resistance and doubt.  It traps you.  Unmakes you.And sometimes, if you're lucky, you survive it.
Series: A Complete Reversion [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1580797
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Where We Used To Bleed, And Where Our Blood Needs To Be

The light of the camp is dying.

Tyler doesn’t move. Maybe he can’t. He can barely feel the scrape of frozen ground against his body as the Bishop drags him away, ever further into the dark. He’s numb, no will to look back, or fight, or even bother focusing his eyes. Even if he could find it into himself to shout, there’s no point. Nobody would hear him over the joyful post-raid ruckus. And even if they did...well.

Nobody ever leaves the City. Not really. Not while they’re still alive.

# # #

Try this:

Choose a position. Nothing complicated. Pick something easy.

Now set a timer for fifteen minutes and hide it. Got a clock? Hide that too. Turn off your music, the TV, whatever noise you can use to measure your life. Make it uncountable.

Now don’t move.

Don’t move until the alarm goes off.

# # #

Dema is clean clothes, gray walls, and high ceilings. Cold light filters in through a window that overlooks the hard stone below.

Tyler wakes up to a brain that feels like a palimpsest, layers on layers on layers. Has this happened to him before? It must have. But he can’t remember things in order. Whenever he tries, it’s like all his brain can do is find wrong turns.

Did he feel like this yesterday? He tries to remember, but it’s like four dozen yesterdays assault him all at once. It makes him queasy.

He sits up without meaning to. Before he realizes it he’s standing by the window, staring out at the buildings, the gray sky, the concrete walkways. It would be easy to open that window. To try and fail to fly.

He thinks about it a lot, when he bothers to think at all. Maybe it’s all he really thinks about here.

He moves closer, stopping only when he catches sight of his reflection, pale and faint in the glass. The heavy black stain around his throat is so dark it practically absorbs the light around it. His hand closes over it instinctively, and he swallows, a curl of terror rising in his guts.

Things Dema is not: wind and cold and fire. Camping on hard ground. Found and foraged (and stolen) provisions. He should be grateful to be safe again. The Helpers told him he should be grateful.

Josh would never say that.

He hopes Josh is okay. He wonders if Josh even knows what happened. Tyler tries to picture the Banditos he was with when it happened, but his brain is a jumble, and he can’t find their faces in it. So many things feel faint. Even Josh feels far away.

He rubs at the tattoos on his arms. Drags his hands over the soft fuzz of his freshly shorn skull.

_I don’t want to forget._

But he is already, isn’t he?

# # #

Don’t move until the alarm goes off.

When the pain arrives, don’t shift. Scratch no itch. Ignore the way your foot begins to tingle. And whatever you do, resist the urge to set the timer.

Wait, did you set the timer?

How long has it been?

# # #

He sits at the base of one of the statues. It’s only barely aberrant behavior, but he’s trying. To be aberrant. To hang on to the things he knows he is instead of the things he’s supposed to be. But the smear is insidious.

It takes his memory, but it also takes his hands and his voice. He’s been fighting for days, exhausting himself in ways that would have left his knuckles bloody and his throat raw if he weren’t only doing it behind his eyes. The process of Correction has him locked inside, every would-be act of resistance a stark contrast to the way the vessel of his body seems to behave more perfectly out of spite.

It’s only when he complies with the Code of Conduct on purpose that he can feel the prison start to open up. Not entirely, but he can feel it, like a rope loosening.

He’s had to do a lot of things right to loosen the rope this much.

Obedience makes the smear fade away faster. Could strategic submission might spare a little his memory? Could he save himself a little by selling out the rest? He doubts it. It might even be worse: doing what the Bishops want might undo him more completely because it means letting go of what he’s trying desperately to cling on to.

That he’s probably contributing to his own erasure with simple things like waking up at the appointed time, washing his hands and face in the morning, changing into fresh clothing is too much. His fingers try to dig into the ground, vertigo and nausea washing over him as his body tries to make him get up and move. It’s like his nerves are suddenly infested by a swarm of insects hive-minding their way to his controls.

All he can do is fight to keep his memories. He repeats them again and again, as if he could maybe etch the shape of them into his brain. The way to Trench. The path to the camp. The way they built bonfires in the old, dead car. Music in the dark. Josh. He tries desperately to hang on to Josh: the angles of his face, how dark his eyes are, the brightly colored tattoos on his right arm. The more he tries, though, the more it starts to blur. Like a dream.

_Was it a dream?_

Tyler shakes his head, rubs his eyes. There’s a pain building behind them, intensity growing like a storm. Like his mind has caught up with his body, and both of them are coming now to shut him down.

_Go quietly and this doesn’t have to hurt._

A pair of dark-clad teenagers hurries by, eyes carefully avoiding him. They know he’s marked. Disobedience is contagious. Association is dangerous. And maybe they can feel what he’s feeling. If they can, maybe it’s better that they stay away.

He stands up without intending to. His vision goes fuzzy.

_Obedience will set you free._

# # #

Don’t move.

# # #

In the Tabernacle, Tyler regards his hands, soft and pliant where they rest in his lap. He counts the lines of his tattoo where it peeks out behind the cuff of his shirt. He can feel his lips, parted just enough to admit the soft exchange of breath. He’s a perfect picture of posture, shoulders relaxed, back straight, eyes forward as he while the Bishops perform the Rites.

They’re making a new gravestone. Maybe it’s his.

How many days has it been? Time feels different in Dema. It goes on forever. Did he ever really leave?

Sometimes, in that eternity, he tries to fight. Less now, but sometimes in the stillness he realizes he’s underneath it all, still screaming and pounding away at the inside of his skull, even if he’s not sure why anymore.

His eyes fix on the gravestone, and he swallows, imagining it. Touches his mottled throat. The sensation dovetails strangely into a sense memory of how his Bishop had so gently placed the smear, streaks that spread across his skin. It’s eerily comforting. The one good touch he can remember.

He just wants _peace_.

In the front of the Tabernacle, the Bishops begin the Call. He and the other congregants, the Blessed, keep silent. His eyes unfocus, and he’s mesmerized by the blur of red. It reminds him of something else. A different kind of movement. A fire, maybe?

Has he ever seen a fire like that? He thinks he has, maybe, but it feels far. Impossibly far. Like thunder. Thunder that makes his bones vibrate and his eardrums ring, and--

Tyler abandons the thought, returns his mind to the proper and upright body that takes him through his day, his work. He goes wherever he’s supposed to be.

By Obedience, he is corrected and purified. Peace is possible. The Blessed walk a path of real Peace.

So why does he wish he could scream?

# # #

How long can you hold out? An hour? Three hours? Half a day?

How long until you become a ghost in your own body?

How long until your body walks away without you?

# # #

It happens at night sometimes.

He’ll wake up with his hand at his throat, like he’s trying to pull something away, or loosen a collar. Usually he just sits up, takes a drink of water, and waits for his breathing to slow down. It’s shameful, he knows, to panic like this.

Some nights he walks to his window and looks out at the soft glow of the city.

His hand finds his throat again. If he squeezed tight his vision would swim and his lungs would burn. If he did that, would he feel something different? Less afraid? Maybe he’d even feel free. But he lets go, let his hand drop heavy to his side.

Nights like this are trouble. He doesn’t talk about them with anyone. Certainly not the way they fill him with a weird sense of not-belonging. Of not being himself. Better not to trouble anyone, lest he bring those thoughts to someone else’s surface, too.

 _You’re thinking too much_ , he tells himself, then squares his shoulders. Breathes deep. Tries to get back in his own peaceful, Blessed skin. Instead he finds a hazy suffering so intense that he can’t move. It feels like life and death, or like something fundamental has been cut out of him. His mind reaches for it, comes up empty. Leaves him heavier than before.

_Maybe it’s time._

The window latch opens easily. He pulls himself up into it, crouches on the sill. Listens to the low hum of the city as he shifts his weight forward a little so that his fingers are the only thing between him and taking flight.

Letting go would be so simple. Just considering it feels like the soft hands of his Bishop gently grazing his throat. Promising to lift his heart. No more heaviness or emptiness or fear, just a harvesting of light, and--

_No._

The voice that he hears -- _remembers?_ \-- startles him so badly he shoves back against the sill, and topples hard to the cold tile floor. Faint wounded noises escape him as he clutches his head. His brain is on fire.

_He knows that voice._

Fingers on his throat. Cold ground. The last hint of firelight.

_No._

Panicked, he scrambles to his feet.

Breaking curfew is forbidden, but he’s fleeing now. Not just his room but his building, rushing out into the pale streets of Dema. When he finds himself at the doors of the Tabernacle he tries them, and is surprised to find them unlocked.

The silence inside is so complete, and his heart thuds in his ears, and the Statue stands tall in the soft glow of the Light at its base. In the apse, he can just make out the silhouettes of the oven and the crucible.

He sobs the Tenets, feels them fall from his lips in a voice that can’t help but shake. He could bury himself in the recitations that drop from him as he recites them, reflexively, over and over. He could fill the whole sanctuary.

When the doors open behind him to admit a pair of Watchers, he doesn’t fight.

They leave him in a mostly-empty room. He remembers it -- from childhood, maybe? -- the plain chair and the higher seat across from it that casts a shadow. The mirror on one of the walls. The windows that face the Glorious Vista that surrounds the city and gives the gravestones space to shine.

When he catches his reflection in his peripheral vision, he wanders to the mirror. His hair is getting long. Dark against his skin. Dark like his eyes. His clothes.

He touches the bare skin of his throat.

He has to wait a long time.

He’s tired.

Even so, he observes protocol when the Bishop enters. He stands and bows his head and waits. Of the Nine, his Bishop -- Nico -- is the most renowned. He feels a pang of guilt, suddenly, at how his rash behavior has inconvenienced someone who has better things to do. He keeps his eyes down because he’s supposed to, but even if he were permitted to look up he’d probably keep them down out of shame.

He doesn’t dare speak. Not until he’s asked.

Only when the Bishop is seated does he sit back down again.

“The Watchers say you came quietly.”

“Yes, Bishop.”

“It’s well that you did.” His voice feels like the hum of the city, deep and resonant and nearly a chord unto itself. “What were you looking for in the Tabernacle?”

“Peace, Bishop.”

“I see.”

From here, he can see the Bishop’s hands, pale save for the smudgy blackness at the tips of his fingers. Tyler swallows, wonders if he’s earned the Smear with his disobedience to the Code of Conduct. He wonders what it’s like. If it hurts.

“You’re struggling.”

He hesitates. “Yes, Bishop.”

“Lift your eyes to mine.”

He does. It’s terrifying. They’re red, like blood seeping through the faint blue veil. It’s impossible to feel he’s doing anything less than staring into the eyes of an angry ghost.

“Tell me, child: what is freedom?”

“A lie,” he answers without intending to. Like his voice has taken over without him. “Freedom. In the City. It’s...it’s a lie.”

The corner of his Bishop’s mouth twitches, but it’s impossible to tell if it’s a hint of a smile, or if it’s sour disapproval.

“No, wait. That’s not--” He shakes his head, suddenly blank. Like something was there, but it isn’t anymore. “Freedom is the Peace we find in the perfect application of the Tenets.”

His words feel small. Useless. Wrong, despite the fact that they’re now correct. His bizarre outburst aside, the truth is that he has tried, again and again, to feel the Truth the Bishops teach. It’s dangerous. It’s a contagious way of being broken.

He doesn’t have any words left and his throat feels tight, and the rules are supposed to be easy. They’re supposed to make him clean, take the pain away.

Obedience is supposed to be Peace.

From his high seat, his Bishop regards him with pity. No, not just pity. Disgust. After a moment, he stands in a swish of red fabric and leaves without speaking again.

Tyler is alone.

He slips out of his chair onto the floor and weeps. He has, for once, managed to cry.

He hates being wrong. He hates failing. He just wants to be good. It’s all he’s ever wanted. To be good. To do right. To be who he’s supposed to be, feel what he’s supposed to be, to be a good servant of the Light.

The Watchers escort him back to his room and leave him there.

He should have joined the Light. He could be good and clean, remade by the hands of his Bishop into a beacon. Go with the vultures. It would be the right thing for someone like him to do. Instead he failed.

_Again._

He almost doesn’t see the thin line of yellow painted along the edge of the window frame.

# # #

Do you break down?

# # #

His alarm goes off at 6:18.

Not 6. 6:18.

He stares at it for a very long time.

# # #

Do you wait?

# # #

The yellow is following him.

Just traces that nobody seems to notice. Hidden, just out of sight unless you’re in the right spot. Lines. Marks. Like a secret code that he can’t read or talk about. He doesn’t even dare write it down. There’s something strange about how the parts of him that feel lost are drawn to it. Like every scrap of yellow in the city is tinder he could use to build a fire.

And then, one night, he sees it: a narrow strip of yellow tape around the banister of a stairwell.

Tyler hurries over to it. He glances over his shoulder before he peels it away. He hurries down, following the stairs behind one of the workhouses, and finds an unlocked cellar door.

The knob is painted yellow.

For the first time in a long while, he feels...not light, exactly. Afraid, but in a good way. Excited?

The room is dark, the only light the pale city glow behind him, and a small warm bleeding from a hiding place. A lantern maybe?

He moves toward the light. Freezes when the door clicks behind him.

The man behind him is unfamiliar. Not short, but not quite tall. A little stocky. He wears a dark jacket, but the tape stripes on the shirt beneath are plain, and the yellow bandanna covering the lower half of his face is enough to confirm: Bandito.

_A path among them. A fire. Being marked. Initiation._

He touches his hair. Remembers it shaved. Makes a sound in his chest. Thinks he might die.

“Careful,” the man says, open palms visible. Offering a hand.

He isn’t sure he should take it. Crouches down instead. The man mirrors him, pulls down the mask.

“You’re Tyler, right?”

The name confuses him. _Tyler? Am I Tyler?_

“You’re lucky. There are people outside who remember your name. I wasn’t. Got stuck with this,” he says, gestures at his tape. “Minus Ten. Minus for short.”

“Minus?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a long story,” he says, more warmth and encouragement in his tone than he -- _Tyler_ \-- has felt in...ever? No. Somehow, he’s felt it before, but can’t remember it. Like someone’s found the place where that feeling goes and scrubbed it off. Painted over it.

_Smeared it away._

“Whoa, careful,” Minus says, helping him keep his balance as he starts to tip again. “It’s a lot. I remember when they got me out. I think I threw up. Josh gave me shit about it for, like, a week. Just breathe.”

“Josh?” A feeling he doesn't remember the name for ignites in his chest.

“He sent this, by the way,” Minus says, pressing a wilted flower into Tyler’s hand. “They grow on the other side of the wall. He says you’ll know where to hide it. That you’ll figure it out. He acted like this has happened before.”

“Six-eighteen,” Tyler whispers, the memory escaping his mouth even though it’s only half-formed in his head. “The alarm--”

“Yeah, that was his idea,” Minus says. “Said you’d know it, too. Maybe not right away, but--”

Tyler -- he really is Tyler, isn’t he? -- grips onto Minus’ arm. “Is he here? _Is Josh here_?”

“Not yet. But we have a plan. The night of the Convocation. Are you in?”

Tyler looks at the flower. Feels something new -- something he thinks might be called hope -- and nods. “What do I need to do?”

# # #

The thing about the exercise isn’t the sitting still part. It’s not about the timer. It’s not about how long you can sit.

It’s about control.

# # #

Tyler counts down the days.

Josh is barely more than a name to him right now, but he was right about Tyler knowing what to do with the daisy. The false bottom on the drawer -- how did he forget about that? -- proves it. There’s a scrap of memory for each of them. He doesn’t know how it works. It complicates things. Complicates the possible consequences.

Does the plan always work? Do they win? He’s not sure, but he’s afraid of what might happen if they don’t, so he’s got to get this right the first time.

He sees the vulture land at dusk.

It’s strange to pack a bag. Stranger still what he chooses to pack. Everything means something. He isn’t sure why, or where some of it came from. Dreams maybe? Is this a dream? Is he asleep? Has he been asleep this whole time? Or is he finally awake?

What if he’s wrong?

The sun sets. The plan is go.

# # #

Who has control if you wait? Who has control if you give in?

Are you your fear? Your discipline?

# # #

Tyler’s heart is pounding in his chest louder than anything he can remember hearing, but maybe not louder than anything he has ever heard. He’s got a lot to remember if this works, and that’s a significant ‘if.’ There’s no way the Watchers won’t see him.

What if they stop him? What if they catch him.

And then he sees it: torches.

_Banditos._

Maybe it’s programming, or maybe it’s fear. Maybe he’s not ready. Whatever the reason, is, Tyler turns, ready to bolt, only to find another line of torch-bearing Banditos behind him. He’s trapped. He’s stuck, he’s --

_Home._

Not in Dema. Not exactly. And not Trench, either.

Home is the handshake that comes back to him when Josh pulls away his mask. Home is the feeling of purpose that blazes through him, even though he doesn’t know why. Not yet. But he will when his memories start to fall into place.

_How did I forget you? How could I ever forget you?_

Home is the way forward, the breach in the wall, the knowledge that the maps are wrong. Home is Josh. Home is escape. Home is helping others get out by showing them it’s possible, over and over again if he has to.

This is home. He’s going home.

**Author's Note:**

> When I wrote A Complete Reversion, part of that process involved spending a lot of time in Tyler's head, to understand the implications of the Smear as I imagine it, and of what Vialism might look like from the inside, especially for someone like the version of him I wrote. I spent a lot of time there, seeing cycles, awakenings, forgettings. I wrote dozens. Only a few of them are here, but I hope you can feel the echoes.
> 
> This wasn't something that was ever going to have a normal structure. I'm still not sure it works. Even so, it belongs here, so here it is.


End file.
